Expectations and Intentions

If you had asked us where we were would be now back in March, we probably would have said, "Jerusalem, or somewhere overseas."  If you would have asked us where we thought we would be back in June, we probably would have answered,  "Milwaukee."

Well, here we are. October. And we are now back living in my hometown of Rhinelander, in Northern Wisconsin. I can't help by laugh a little and then cry a little.

We went over to Jerusalem with big expectations. And we thought we were justified in doing so because we saw God so abundantly provide for our going. I still know that we didn't go there for no reason, and I do believe that God was at work in our journey. However, we are still working to see the purpose in it all. We came back feeling pretty down trodden and discouraged, almost feeling as though we had failed: our friends and family who had sent us, God and ourselves. Yes, opportunities did come up but nothing seemed right, right then. 

In June we returned planning to resettle in Milwaukee, reconnect with our community and find new ways to serve our city. But as we returned and spent some time back in Milwaukee we started to feel like we were falling back into our same routines, or would have to, and that is what we had worked to break out of. So after spending some time up north with my family and friends, we started talking about the possibility of moving up here. It was something we had always talked about but didn't think would happen for some time. But we decided if there were a time to try something new, this was it. So we did it. We packed our stuff up, found a place to rent, and moved north. 

It still seems a little crazy to us that we live here. But I feel at this point that we have come here as kind of a retreat. A quiet, peaceful place for us to figure out what we did, what we are doing and what we are going to do. Something that Jared requested after we returned was that we, for some amount of time, try to just be content somewhere and not talk about what is next. Something I, admittedly, am not good at. I want to dream and talk about the future, what we can do, where we can go...and that is a burden to Jared. So when we came North, I committed to not bringing up the future and just being content where we are. And for the first time in a long time, I am. 

There are certainly days that I want to daydream of where to go next, but for the most part I am happy being here now. If nothing else, maybe from our trip I learned the difference between expectations and intentions. Not that God is not mighty and all powerful, but He doesn't do what we want or even what we think we need, because He knows better. We expected Him to do something big. Open a big door that would have been blatantly clear that that was the way to go. But He simply showed us a few possibilities and said, "Here  you go, you choose." 

Moving up here, I decided that we needed to have intentions, rather than expectations. Nothing is going to be handed to us, we have to decide we are going to do something for the Lord and He will bless it (or He will close a door!) So in coming up here, we have been trying to be intentional. Not only with the way we are living, but in how we are serving. We have started a small group here for people our age, which is a severely overlooked demographic in this area. We are modeling it after the group that we were part of, and loved, in Milwaukee. It has been small so far, but we just want to create a place for people our age to come and pray and worship together and learn to love and serve Jesus together. 

I am also feeling like this is almost a time of rest and retreat. I don't know why we deserve it or need it. But being here in this place has made it easier to relax a little and be content where we are. Maybe it is just the fresh air and lack of traffic! We haven't given up on our dreams of far away lands, but for right now it just feels really good to be home!

If you think of us, please pray for our small group. That people would come, and that we could make a space for people to meet with the Lord and develop a stronger understanding and relationship with Him. Please also pray for the land and the people we came to love in Jerusalem. Pray for peace. And, praise Him. For He is good! And He seriously loves you!

Also, if you are looking for an amazing song: 

The Good, The Bad and The Weird

We have made it home to Milwaukee. We are unpacked, and settling in. While our internal clocks are still a little off, we are happy to be back and also happy for the great time we had while overseas. We have time now to reflect on our trip, and thought we would share lists of some of the best, worst and weirdest things about our life in Jerusalem. Obviously, there is so much more to process through and come to terms with, but here are a few things that stick out.


The Good:
- Arab Hospitality: you can never go hungry or thirsty when you are in an Arab home.

- Falafel, hummus and fresh bread available everywhere.

- St. George's Church.

St. George's Cathedral

- Living with Mr. and Mrs. Plant (daily yoga, mysterious juices and cards).

- Easy public transportation. Taking buses or trains made getting around simple.

First time on the bus by ourselves.

- Wandering around the old city on Sunday afternoons.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

- Being able to work on a variety of different projects with diverse groups of people.

With Christine and Rajaee at JEO.

- The faithfulness and dedication of PBS and JEO who we got to work with.

- Being such a small country, you are never that far from anywhere! An hour and a half driving will get you just about anywhere you would want to go.



The Bad:
- The garbage disposal system (throw garbage near dumpster, set on fire, repeat.)

- Checkpoints. We were lucky to not have any issues, but it generally makes life more inconvenient for us, and extremely difficult for many of our friends.

- Customer service. Either super over-bearing and pushy or couldn't be bothered to look up from their cell phones.

- Bugs. Giant mosquitoes and millipedes.

- Segregation. So many aspects of society are divided along religious and racial lines. 

- Gaza. Getting to go to Gaza was definitely a highlight of the whole trip, and met so many amazing, generous people, but the realities of Gaza are overwhelming and difficult to comprehend. Just as an example, the crowded public beaches are raw sewage dumps, and eating too much watermelon is hazardous because of the huge amounts of rat poison used to keep pests off.



The Weird:
- Arab Hospitality: it can get overwhelming and rough on the digestive system after a while.

- An SUV carrying a whole huge family down a main road in Gaza, tailgate down with about four people, including kids, hanging out.

- Sitting at a cafe watching people on Jaffa Street (a busy shopping area in Jerusalem) and we saw a young woman, probably in her 20s, with ripped jeans and a crop top, long blonde hair, and a military rifle strapped casually on her back. 

- The stark contrast between Tel Aviv and Gaza, despite only being separated by 35 miles.

Exhibit A: Tel Aviv

Exhibit B: Gaza

- Dumpsters of stray cats. You don't see many stray dogs, but you see cats in everywhere, mostly congregating at/in the dumpsters where they have a constant supply of food. 

- The Old City and the blend of modern shops and restaurants set into ancient walls, adjacent to thousands of years of history. The only way to get supplies is by weaving a tractor through the narrow paths, or by hand.

- Loose copyright laws (Stars & Bucks Coffee, Sab Way Sandwiches, Sub & Deli Sandwiches, Nutella Cafe)

- All of the tourists, representing so many countries, faiths, backgrounds and opinions. 

Final Week Wrap Up

This is it. The Home stretch. It is surreal that three months have passed. Part of us feels like we haven't been here long enough to have that be reality, the other part feels as though we have been here so long that we are now accustomed to life here. But we are excited to come home, and we are excited to see what else life has in store for us.

Last weekend started with two days of filming. We were trying to film a dramatic reading of a monologue that would be shot at many angles and in many locations. We started out the day with a crew of four to operate six different cameras. By our third location, we had lost half of our force, and our last few shoots were just my dad and myself, juggling the cameras and equipment.

On Monday we went to Gaza again, for the last time. We were a part of a secret plan to reunite the family that we stay with and one of their sons (a fellow Bible Society worker) who had to leave Gaza to escape persecution over seven years ago. It is difficult for any Palestinians to get permissions to enter Gaza, and even more so for native Gazans to return. We were granted a visit with the Catholic priest in Gaza, a young Argentinian who speaks perfect Arabic. He was able to share some of the difficulties the Church is facing in Gaza, and my parents were able to share some of the ideas they have for blessing the Christians in Gaza.

After leaving Gaza we decided to go to the beach in Ashkelon. Even though it is only 10 miles from Gaza, it is a completely different world. As we enjoyed the pristine sand beach and clean sea water, we mentioned how different it is just a few minutes away, where the public beaches double as raw-sewage dumps.

On Wednesday we were asked, along with my mom, to help run a day camp for Christian children in Bir Zeit. Katelyn and mom would lead three half-hour Zumba lessons, and I would assist with a kitchen activity (making jello.) This was extremely exhausting, especially for Katelyn and mom, who then had to do Zumba again in the evening for their regular classes.

A few small gifts from our students.

On Thursday we had our final English Coffee Hour classes. We wanted our last lessons to be fun and a last chance to make connections with these girls who we had been working with for seven weeks. We played games, ate cookies and cakes, and mom sat with us and we sang songs for the girls. The girls were so sweet and gave us little gifts for us to remember them by. It was difficult saying goodbye to each of them, and also to our friends and helpers in the class, Christine and Rajaee.

Rajaee and Christine

On Friday, Katelyn and mom had their big end of the year Zumba party. About 35 women came for two hours of dancing, celebrating and snacks. Katelyn is grateful that she was able to reconnect with a woman that we had met two years ago when we first visited Jerusalem. She had grown up in Michigan and moved back to Jerusalem with her husband. Katelyn and this woman were able to get together for coffee date and have a lot in common.

Zumba Party!

Now we are getting ourselves packed and cleaned up. My parents are leaving just two days after we depart, so we are helping get the house put away for two months of dormancy. We cleaned out the fridge, emptied the bathroom, and now we are just waiting, trying to enjoy the time we have left, and worrying about the weight of our luggage.

Time keeps on ticking...

We have under two weeks left here, and we can't believe it. The time has gone so quickly. We are so thankful and glad for our time here and have enjoyed it tremendously: being with Mom and Dad, experiencing a different culture, meeting and working with a ton of great people, and of course the food! But it has also been a difficult time. We really felt before we came that God was going to make our next steps clear to us and give us a clear path to go down. I think we expected, because He so immensely provided for this trip and opened the doors to come here, that something big was going to happen. And we are slowly, and somewhat painfully, being reminded that God doesn't work within our time table or meet our expectations. He knows better!

While we have received a few offers on teaching positions here, neither of us is feeling at peace about returning to the country by the end of the summer. So for the time being we are planning on moving back to Milwaukee to kind of reevaluate our lives: goals, intentions, values. We are looking forward to going back home for a season and really investing in the city and our community, something that we didn't always make time for in the past. We aren't sure exactly what that looks like but we have been talking, praying and brainstorming how this might play out. With that being said, we are really excited to know that if we do want to be back in this place, we have multiple open doors waiting for us.

Although we aren't leaving here with a solid plan of what our next steps will be, we know God didn't bring us here for nothing. We are definitely feeling that He has been using this time to work in our hearts and minds and we think that once we get home, or maybe farther down the road, this work will be revealed to us. 

We Gaza Get Outta This Place!

We've been to Gaza three times now, and the first two times were, honestly, kind of miserable. Don't get me wrong, we are SO thankful that we had the opportunity to go, and we loved meeting people, and our eyes were opened to the suffering and struggle of everyday life there. But it was hot. Really, really hot. And we were kind of force-fed cookies and weird juices and coffee everywhere we visited (Gazan hospitality will not be outdone!) and we left the strip feeling sweaty, overfed and weighed down emotionally.

This last time was different. Instead of being tasked with distributing food packages or visiting homes that were given water filters, we went specifically to visit churches. The church in Gaza is constantly being put in a difficult position, and many Christians in Gaza have been fleeing the area as soon as opportunities arise, whether legally or not, and we really cannot blame them for wanting to leave. It was a welcome change to visit both the Roman Catholic church and the Baptist church. At the Baptist church, we were able to play music for worship, and the sermon was given by Rev. John Angle, an Anglican priest from England who has been visiting Gaza for several decades.

Statue of Mary and mural at the Catholic Church in Gaza.

After the evening church service we were invited to one of the best restaurants in Gaza for dinner with a group of students. This was such a different side to Gaza than what we had seen before. We ate our grilled meats while overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, a cool breeze coming off the water, and hundreds of Gazans enjoying the beach. However, being foreigners in the restaurant, we attracted some unexpected attention. At one point in the evening, a large group of young men who work for Jawwal, the largest cell-service provider in Palestine, noticed our group and were drawn to our table, and gave everyone at the table gift bags, and shot video and pictures of the foreigners holding Jawwal swag. Now we have some odd souvenirs with a funny story!

Boardwalk Sunset in Gaza.

A friend had given us a gift of one night at a hotel in Galilee, and our plan was to leave Gaza early on Monday morning and drive straight to Galilee, swim in the lake and spend a day relaxing. We offered to help a friend carry some luggage through Erez. Once you make it through the turstiles with one bag, you cannot go back for more. There were six large suitcases altogether. So getting through all of the security measures was made slightly more difficult. Once we got through to the baggage claim area, and only five bags came off the belt.  So we waited. For two hours. Eventually, we figured out that there had been some forbidden electrical items packed into the suitcase (the offensive items included a crockpot and a blender!), and it was being sent back to the Hamas border control, and we were forced to call the man who asked the luggage to be brought out to tell him that one of the bags never made it.

After this ordeal, we made it out of Erez and were on the road, making our way to Galilee. Of course, this did not go smoothly either, and about an hour out of Gaza, while stopped at a junction and listening to Harry Potter (Book 7!), we were rear-ended by woman who was not paying full attention. No one was hurt and there was no serious damage to either car. Finally, we arrived at Maagan resort in Galilee and enjoyed the sunshine, water, and peacocks.

Gaza

We finally made it to Gaza. This has been on our hearts and minds since we got here, and we have been looking for ways to get the appropriate permissions. This has been such an integral part to my parents' ministry, and currently, they are the only representatives of the Bible Society who are able to enter. There has recently been activity in Gaza by an extremist group that self-identifies as a branch of ISIS, and the Hamas government has been trying to keep this movement from growing. The situation has a lot of people on high alert, and we were advised not to try to spend the night this time. This left us with a short window of time when all of the checkpoints would be open to enter, finish all of the visa paperwork, visit families, and reenter Israel. 

We left our house at precisely 6:37ish, and headed for the border crossing at Erez. This is the primary land crossing from Israel, and really, the only way in or out of the place. The first barrier is Israeli border control. A massive hanger-like structure, full of modern surveillance technology and heavily armed civilian guards, it is mainly empty. It was built to handle the flow of thousands of daily commuters into Israel, once an essential aspect of the Gaza economy, but which has come to nearly a complete halt. Permission to leave is nearly impossible to obtain unless due to medical emergencies, and Israeli citizens are banned from entering. Once you leave the enormous building, you begin the long walk. Because Erez is exclusively a pedestrian crossing, travelers have to walk the 15 minutes through the militarized buffer zone through a serpentine, caged pathway, covered by a corrugated roof. Enterprising Gazans drive golf carts back and forth, giving rides to those who might need them.

At the end of the caged walkway you arrive at the second checkpoint, Fatah. This is the controlling party of Palestine, and due to the unique political climate, are necessary at this crossing, not because they have any control over Gaza, but because Israel and Hamas refuse to acknowledge each other's legitimacy, Fatah has to stand between them so that an authorized border-crossing can take place. Picture it as two middle school rivals shunning each other, passing angry notes back and forth through a inoffensive mutual proxy. Finally, the Hamas border is reached, and the cultural transformation is complete. The advanced defensive technology and powerful industrial fans you saw in Israel are replaced by a few corrugated shacks and an effectively old-fashioned manual luggage search. Once your papers are deemed to be in order, you are finally able to enter Gaza.

We were met at the Hamas border by a friend of the Bible Society, a Muslim man who has picked my parents up from this ordeal several times. We climb into a taxi micro bus and begin working our way toward Gaza City. The first task was to get pictures taken for our permission cards that we had applied for. We stopped at a small studio and posed. Because resources like water and electricity are very tightly regulated for Gaza, the studio was lit upon our arrival by a small, 1/2 horsepower diesel generator that whirred, wheezed and grinded as the photographer's strobe lights drained the available wattage. Driving through the city to the municipal building, we could not avoid noticing signs of the destruction last summer's conflict with Israel produced. Half of an apartment building would be destroyed by aircraft fire, debris and material still blocking the main street a year later, but there would still be a store open for business on the ground floor. This is a region still reeling from the realities of war-time struggle, yet there is no visible hope of rebuilding.

After submitting our applications for return visas at the municipal building we were given a surprise mission. Our connection from the Bible Society had arranged, without our knowledge, that we would spend part of what remained of our time in Gaza visiting families who had been given powerful water filters by the Bible Society. Since there are no representatives of the Bible Society remaining permanently in Gaza, we were sent to follow up on these gifts, and reinforce the connection. The families we visited seemed as surprised by the visit as we were, but these four Muslim families were gracious and all sweetly invited us in, proud to show off their new filter systems, undoubtedly the most valuable possessions they had. Water in Gaza, when they are allowed to get it, is not safe to drink from the tap, is expensive to buy and filtration is difficult and inconsistent. For these families, to have a safe, steady supply of water is essential and rare.

After showing us his filter, the father of one family wanted to show us around what had been his neighborhood. It is difficult to describe the destruction. We tried taking a few pictures, but the scope is difficult to capture. Entire city blocks are rubble. Skeletal structures of former homes, mosques, supermarkets and hospitals were still being sifted through by packs of young boys, trying to find scraps of rebar and metal. The whole buildings that did remain, pock marked with thousands of bullet holes and units shot out by tank shells, showed that people were still trying to live among the ruins, hanging out their laundry in the hot sun.

We ended our time in Gaza at our friends house whom we had hosted here in Jerusalem around Easter time. We ate way more delicious food than we should have, and enjoyed our last hour out of the sun and heat. We keep being reminded that we have a room reserved just for us, and if we return to Gaza in the next few weeks, it will be their house we stay at. Unfortunately, we had to get back to the Erez crossing before it closed at 3PM, and it is a bad idea to try your luck when there are three, somewhat hostile borders to cross in order to get back home. On the walk back through the caged path, we could feel the full 105 degrees, and were happy to get back to the air conditioned car and to take long showers when we got back to Jerusalem.

Updates

We are thankful to God for our opportunities and the amazing things we have gotten to witness as we have been here. There are no limits to His love for us, and we are daily reminded of the grace and mercy He shows us by offering free will, salvation and hope for our futures.

We are still (!) waiting for entry to Gaza. We attempted an entry two weeks ago when we had heard back from Israel that we were granted permission, but were stopped at the border by Hamas when we did not have up-to-date permission from the Gaza government to enter. This is in many ways, a very backwards place, and it seems as though there are multiple layers of occupation and oppression from all sides. It is confusing, and we have heard horror stories of the bureaucracy that it creates. Now we are once again waiting for permission. This is especially difficult for my parents, as it has been nearly three months that their friends in Gaza have had to wait patiently for their visit.

This last weekend we all went on a day-trip to the Dead Sea region and hiked through En Gedi nature reserve. En Gedi has a long Biblical history, but is most well known for being where David and his army hid from Saul. We took a short trail, and saw a few of the famous waterfalls and springs that David and Solomon wrote about in their wisdom literature and Psalms. After our short hike we took a quick swim/float in the Dead Sea.

We have also taken time to visit two schools that are seeking volunteer teachers. One school is right here in Beit Hanina, about a two minute walk from where we are staying. The other school is in Bethlehem and is run by old family friends and Eastbrook veterans. We've enjoyed touring the campuses, meeting staff, sitting in on lessons and volunteering in classrooms. We have never considered ourselves as teachers, but we are seeing these schools as potential opportunities for the future, as the need is great and there are so many roles needing to be filled.

We ask that you will all continue to pray for clarity and peace about the decision making process for us, as that has been stressful. Also, please pray for our Arabic lessons, that we would have patience and energy to learn and focus, and the English Coffee Hour lessons we are teaching, that we would be gracious and thoughtful teachers.